by John Coggon, Professor of Law, University of Bristol Law School
The public interest has no single, fixed definition. Even as a technical term of art its sense varies both for being context dependent and for being a question that may be settled by different sorts of institutional actor. It may, for instance, demand consideration of national security, national economic interest, protection of health, maintenance of a justice system, protection of fundamental rights. And determinations may be made by courts, politicians, legislators, executive agencies, and so on. Each can and will bring different forms and ranges of consideration to the process of determining what the public interest demands, and whether those demands are compelling. (more…)
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Widely in legal education, research, and practice, and across different areas of legal jurisdiction, law is a discipline that is characterised by its sharp division into sub-disciplines. With this division comes super-specialisation. That specialisation has the effect of inviting in-depth focus on discrete areas of law and regulation, without claims to expertise or application across the whole. At the same time, though, there are some basic legal concepts and phenomena that span the different ways that we might carve up the legal system. One, of course, is the concept of law itself. And there is a diversity of others, such as rights, duties, enforceability, and burdens of proof. A significant concept on that list is the public interest: a consequential aspect of law and regulation in practice and legal analysis. (more…)
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been permeating all aspects of our lives for a while. AI underpins several of the digital services we use and, perhaps less known to most of us, an increasing number of public services. However, only recently and on the back of questionable claims about existential AI threats, has AI regulation started to grab mainstream headlines, permeate public discourse, and quickly rise to the top of the political agenda.Before this recent flurry of AI regulation discourse, in late March 2023, the UK Government published a much-awaited white paper setting out its ‘pro-innovation approach to AI regulation’ (the AI White Paper). Much has happened in the short period since the AI White Paper was published, including the launch of a £100m Foundation Model Taskforce, the appointment of its Chair, and the announcement that, in a bid to lead the global discussion on AI guardrails, the UK will convene a global AI safety summit.(more…)
byTony Prosser, Professor of Public Law, University of Bristol Law School.
The UK Government has proposed major changes to the organisation of its rail services, which were privatised and split between a large number of different companies in the 1990s. The change will introduce a new ‘guiding mind’ in the form of a public body, Great British Railways, which will be responsible for managing the infrastructure and for commissioning passenger services. The services, however, will continue to be provided under contract by private companies. (more…)
Debates on alcohol policy are necessarily complex and controversial, and a complete consensus on how we should regulate this area will not be achieved. Like other lawful but regulated products, alcohol presents benefits and harms that may be understood from ranging perspectives. These include views based in cultural, economic, ethical, historical, legal, medical, population-based, religious, and social understandings. Of necessity, outlooks on alcohol policy and the role of regulation therefore vary both within and across such differing sources of critique. The values—positive and negative—of alcohol at individual, familial, community, commercial, and population levels thus call for careful, reasoned, and respectful public debates.
Even within the context of public health analysis, we cannot just look to scientific studies to inform and determine policy: we are required to consider forms of ‘evidence’ from different disciplines and sectors. This is well explained in a recent publication by the Health Foundation, with papers applied to child obesity but with lessons that are generalisable across health policy. However, for many working in public health, or members of wider communities who have interests in what makes good health policy, challenges emerge in relation to the conduct of public debates: often care, reason, and respect are replaced by simplistic slurs and assertions. And in this context, accusations of nanny statism are a key and persistent example. (more…)
European data protection authorities (EU DPAs) play crucial roles in protecting personal data rights. However, many EU DPAs do not have adequate access to resources in order to be effective data privacy protectors. Although the data privacy law literature recognizes that many EU DPAs operate within such constraints, to date, there has been a dearth of empirical studies on how limited resources can impact on enforcement. A new article* makes a modest attempt to address this empirical gap by analysing selected empirical findings of a recent project which examined the investigations of multinational cloud providers by EU DPAs (Cloud Investigations).
This article draws on the fields of socio-legal studies and regulation to interpret these empirical findings and advances three arguments. First, due to their fiscal constraints, some EU DPAs often have to make tactical enforcement decisions about initiating Cloud Investigations as well as the foci and methods of Cloud Investigations. The decision-making process can be very complex for some EU DPAs as they have to not only consider but also at times balance a broad range of factors including external pressures, law and enforcement styles. Second, hybrid forms of data governance can often emerge during Cloud Investigations as EU DPAs delegate their regulatory tasks to private and governmental (other than EU DPAs) actors due to the limited resources. Finally, this article suggests that hybrid data governance needs to be carefully designed in order to ensure effective and robust data governance. Suggestions are made on how the ‘regulatory space’ can be designed in order to promote accountability, trust, robust data protection and effective multi-actor collaboration.
When academics, policymakers, media commentators, and citizens talk about a European Union (EU) “democratic deficit,” they often miss part of the story. My new book, From the “Democratic Deficit” to a “Democratic Surplus”: Constructing Administrative Democracy in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2017), challenges the conventional narrative of an EU “democratic deficit.” It argues that EU mandates have enhanced the democratic accountability of national regulatory agencies by creating entry points for stakeholder participation in national regulation. These avenues for public participation were formerly either not open or not institutionalized to this degree.
By focusing on how the EU formally adopted procedural mandates to advance the substantive goal of creating an internal market in electronic communications, I demonstrate that EU requirements have had significant implications for administrative governance in the member states. Drawing on theoretical arguments in favor of decentralization traditionally applied to substantive policy-making, the book illustrates how the decentralized EU structure may transform national regulatory authorities into individual sites of experimentation and innovation. It thus contributes to debates about federalism, governance and public policy, as well as about deliberative and participatory democracy in the United States and Europe. (more…)
